Senegal: The return

It was called the Door of No Return, the coffin-sized portal in the slave house that looked out onto the Atlantic Ocean. From here, the curator told us, black captives were crowded into the bowels of ships that would take them to a life of bondage. Some didn't survive the journey; many who did were brutally broken, or "seasoned," in such places as Jamaica before landing in plantations across the Americas. None were to ever return -- except, perhaps, as ghosts. I am here, on Gorée Island in Senegal, the first member of my family to set foot back on the African continent. Our lore says that we are descended from the Ashantis of Ghana. But we could be from any other group, including the Fulani, the Mandinka and the Wolof of Senegal, that collectively gave up an estimated 10 million people during 400 years of this peculiar trade. Not knowing has been a source of frustration, but also a blessing. We claim the whole restless continent in its wars and wonders, its problems and promise. Standing in this slave house, hearing the waves crash, I feel the tug of latent memories. I am one of hundreds of thousands who have made this ancestral pilgrimage, visiting hallowed space to ground myself in the spirit of my ancestors -- to steel myself in the knowledge that any little thing I face is nothing compared with what they endured.

The Ghanaians use the word "sankofa" to describe what I'm doing. It means going back in order to go forward -- through the past into the future.

Isn't that what makes us human: a knowledge of who we are or might have been?

Nearly 12 years after that memorable trip, the experience still overpowers me. I had flown to Senegal, the westernmost country in Africa, as part of a delegation of blacks going to a summit in Dakar. While I sat in jovial comfort during the six-hour trip from Philadelphia, I imagined how different it had been for my forebears, who must have been terrified during the harrowing three-month sea journey to the New World. I felt a sense of redemption, flying over, but also a twinge of pain.

When we landed in Dakar, it was clear that my schedule would change. Sure, the plenary sessions on economic and cultural development sounded good, even necessary. But they could not hold my interest against a deeper need to reconnect to something that I cannot even name -- a spirit? history?

On the ride from the airport, I was struck by how the people we were passing in the salt-tinged, humid air resembled those I knew from the places I had lived: New York, Chicago, New Haven. In Jamaica, where I spent my early years before emigrating north, there are distinct characteristics associated with my family lineage. The square and boxy Folkes head combined with the small, round Jones ears and the Holmes eye-line made some of us look cheetah-like, with resemblances to one of our heroes, Nelson Mandela.

The Senegalese, who paused by the side of the road to stare at us, had a familial feel. Maybe it was my hunger for connection, but I swear that I saw distant cousins or at least people I recognized.

Of course there was a language barrier that we, Africans and those returned from the diaspora, had to brook through feelings, culture and food.

Senegalese prepared rice in myriad ways that reminded me of the color my own family brought to grains. I washed down my meals with bissap, a cranberry-colored drink made from hibiscus petals that I recognized instantly as the same sorrel that Jamaicans relish at Christmastime.

And when visiting people in their homes, whether modest or lavish, I recognized a spirit of grace and generosity that was heartening. Our hosts, even those who were materially poorer than us, were not defined by what they had. This, too, reminded me of the pride that I have seen in my own family. They happily shared whatever they had.

Pascal, a witty, well-read soldier with whom I made friends, explained to me that giving alms is one of the cardinal tenets of the Sufi Islam followed by most Senegalese. And the many beggars we saw limping and shaking their cans a block from our hotel were mostly people from neighboring countries coming to take advantage of Senegalese generosity.

In planning for the trip, my wife and I had bought Michael Jordan T-shirts and caps, school supplies, music CDs and other cultural artifacts as gifts. We gave them to our hosts, to the beggars, to streetwalkers, anyone who asked. We had suitcases of our own alms.

Several days after my arrival in Senegal, I took the 15-minute ferry ride from Dakar to Gorée Island.

At the dock, children offered shells and dolls. They seemed shy compared with the hawkers on the mainland, but I preferred to avoid any hint of commerce at this site where my forebears were once measured in currency.

The island, shaped vaguely like the eye of a hurricane, has a movie-set quality to it. Its curry-colored dirt is off-set by cacti and bright, blooming bougainvillea. Colonial homes, where some of the island's 1,200 residents live, line narrow streets.

There are a few museums and places of worship, a mosque and a church. But the people in my ferry group, all black and from places such as England, Canada and the States, were there to experience one thing: La Maison des Esclaves.

The slave house was constructed in 1776 as the home of a wealthy slave trader. Historians debate whether it was ever used to warehouse vast numbers of slaves, and whether any African ever boarded a ship through the so-called door of no return. Still, the building, one of the few remaining structures that indisputably played a part in slave trade, serves as a powerful ancestral emblem. Standing at the pink curving double staircases at the entrance, I felt a psychic dissonance akin to the spookiness I feel on plantation tours in the South. Can such a pretty thing be the site of such historical ugliness?

I have defined myself through my wits and intellect. But it did not take long for me to become undone on Gorée Island.

As I stood listening to the curator, Joseph Ndiaye, recount the history of the island in French, I did not need a translator to tell me what he was saying -- how the captives were measured, how families were separated from each other, how the people were sorted by gender, age and condition -- young girls, children, and the "temporarily unfit."

That history came upon me like a shadow as Ndiaye led us into the narrow corridors. The tour into the holding rooms, with their dank walls and peeling paint, proved too tight at times. (I did not need any more physical reminders.) The most confining area was behind those lovely stairs. That was reserved for recalcitrants -- those who fought their captivity from the get-go. Were those some of my forebears, the proud and willful ones, the ones whose offspring might include Paul Bogle, Harriet Tubman and Nat Turner?

The walls of the place carried the vapors of history. The cracks were the scars not just of a building, but of a psyche. They signaled wounds surfacing. Somehow, as the wind blew outside and the man talked in a language I did not understand, I felt I was in an alien world that was mine.

It was not the first time I would feel that way in Senegal, but it was the one that surprised me with its power. When he asked if there were any questions, I did not speak. I do not like to burble and not even my prescription sunglasses could hide the unfolding effect on me. In that place, there was a release that was as powerful, for me at least, as the moon moving tides.

One day, at the Sandaga marketplace, the main bazaar in Dakar, I was overcome with a different sort of emotion. Merchants surrounded me in two lines -- one going clockwise, the other counter. As they spun around me, I became dizzy and claustrophobic. They were offering dolls, clothes, sunglasses, whatever. I had some sort of flashback, a kind of bone memory, and I realized that they could sell anything.

I screamed at the hawkers, cursing in the Jamaican Patwa that only comes out in nightmares or in moments of supreme anger.

They understood, not the language, I'm sure, but the pitch. And they left me alone.

Later, as I walked back to the hotel, Pascal, my soldier friend, apologized for the merchants' aggressiveness. He understood how I must feel, he said, since his ancestors betrayed mine.

I welcomed his sentiment, but he needed not apologize.

The relationship between Africans in diaspora and those on the motherland is fraught with tension and misgivings. Yes, the capture and shipping of humans into bondage could not have happened without the collusion of Africans. And the Africans may not have known what lay ahead for the captives, thinking it was like the slavery that they practiced, one that did not try to strip people of language and culture.

I found myself with a strange peace. I did not harbor any ill for these descendants of Africans who stayed and can follow their ancestral lines for hundreds of years.

One of the byproducts of slavery, or of being descended from captives, is that we know so little about our history. I can trace my family back a century and a half, then everything gets swallowed up in darkness.

This lack of information, plus a general sense of shame because our ancestors did not arrive by Ellis Island, has marked me for much of my life. My family has lots of bloodlines, and we are proud of all of them. But the ones that express themselves most profoundly are African. The trauma of slavery, not to mention the shackling of the spirit that I witness in so many people, remains. But going to Senegal helped me to lift the shame and understand my roots.

Stepping onto that terra-cotta colored dirt of Gorée Island was like stepping into shadows of myself. I was not supposed to have returned to a place like this where my ancestors may have departed for the unknown.

Groaning in the bowels of fetid ships that were followed by sharks, hearing the hurt of others near death and soon thrown overboard, they probably had nothing but terror and dread in their hearts.

But in some rare moments, when the suffering had died down just a bit, they must have promised themselves, in whatever languages they spoke, that one day, one beautiful day, their offspring would give honor to their suffering. One day, their children and grandchildren would rise on the wounds of their bruised voices and striped backs, and sing.

In the salt that I tasted of my own tears, in the timeless ocean that keeps time around Gorée Island, in the sticky walls that carried the hurt of a hundred years' worth of human spirits, I felt something move. I was some captive's dream, returning now as trembling flesh.

Rohan Preston • 612-673-4390 • rpreston@startribune.com